Paul Ryan Helping Romney Unseat Obama From Digital Throne

President Obama has long been considered the most digitally engaged candidate and president of all time — but is buzz over Paul Ryan helping the Mitt Romney campaign generate more online engagement than the Obama team?

A Pew study released Wednesday found that “Barack Obama holds a distinct advantage over Mitt Romney in the way his campaign is using digital technology to communicate directly with voters” on the basis that the Obama campaign is posting four times the amount of content and is active on twice the number of platforms that the Romney team.

However, the Pew study was based on data gathered throughout two weeks in early June — well before Saturday’s announcement of Paul Ryan as Romney’s vice presidential pick.

That announcement immediately led to a spike in interest on Twitter, with nearly 4,000 tweets per minute about Ryan being sent during the event. A radian6 analysis found that the announcement drove mentions of Romney over those of Obama for the first time in three months:

Romney’s digital team simultaneously rolled out new campaign-themed Facebook and Twitter profiles for Ryan, which have seen explosive growth: @PaulRyanVP has gained almost 28,000 new followers daily, while the Facebook page has more than 666,000 likes in four days — 166,500 a day.

Romney’s online profiles have gotten a Ryan boost as well: the announcement pushed Romney’s Facebook page over the 4 million mark and more than 1.5 million people are “talking about” him on the social network: an engagement rate of roughly 37%. While Obama’s “likes” count still reigns supreme at just under 28 millon, he has less than a half-million users “talking about” his page: an engagement rate of less than 5%.

Excitement over Ryan has benefitted the Romney campaign’s online fundraising, too. According to Romney’s Press Secretary Andrea Saul, the campaign raised $7.4 million online with more than 101,000 donations.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaigns’ digital director, in an email to Mashable. “In the first 72 hours over 600,000 people join Paul Ryan on Facebook, 100,000 on Twitter and 100,000+ online donations were made. People across the country are excited about a Romney – Ryan ticket.”

Still, despite the occasional Twitter town hall and Google Hangout, neither Romney nor Obama have been extensively using social media as a place for interacting with voters.

“If the internet offers the promise of making campaigns more of a two-way conversation with citizens, the candidates are not participating,” said Pew. “For example, just 16% of Obama’s tweets over the two-week period studied were retweets. The Romney campaign had just one retweet during this period — something from Romney’s son Josh.”

Is Romney beginning to dethrone Obama as the “digital president,” or is the Ryan bump just a product of temporary excitement? Do you want the candidates to engage with their social audience more than they have? Share your thoughts in the comments.